Saturday, June 29, 2024

Dynamite Guitars: 2024/2025 Programs

Those that visit the home page for the Omni Foundation for the Performing Arts will see that the 2024/2025 schedule for the Dynamite Guitars concert season has now been finalized. Fourteen programs have been planned for this season. As in the past the five recitals in the San Francisco Performances (SFP) Guitar Series will be included in Dynamite Guitars. In addition, the full season will also include three recitals hosted by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM). Two of these will take place in the Caroline H. Hume Concert Hall, and the other will take place in the Barbro Osher Recital Hall in the new Bowes Center. Those events have not yet been added to the Performances Web page on the SFCM Web site, so it is unclear whether or not those performances will be live-streamed. My “educated guess” is that they will not!

All of the programs will be evening recitals beginning at 7:30 p.m. They will take place at St. Mark’s Lutheran Church (1111 O’Farrell Street, just west of the corner of Franklin Street), Herbst Theatre (on the ground floor of the Veterans Building at 401 Van Ness Avenue), and at the two SFCM locations, 50 Oak Street for the Concert Hall and 200 Van Ness Avenue for the Bowes Center. Programs have not yet been finalized, but the participating performers will be as follows:

Saturday, September 21, Herbst Theatre: This will be the fourth edition of DYNAMITE GUITARS. The duo of Olli Soikkeli and Cesar Garabini will present a fusion of Gypsy jazz and the Brazilian choro genre. They will share the program with Joe Robinson and Christie Lenée, both of whom are steel string guitar virtuosos.

Saturday, October 12, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Italian guitarist Carlotta Dalia will make her San Francisco debut.

Saturday, November 2, Herbst Theatre: The first program to be shared with SFP will present the return of the duo of Sérgio and Odair Assad.

Sunday, November 10, Hume Concert Hall: This will be a return solo recital by Brazilian Yamandu Costa, a master on the seven-string guitar, who made his last appearance in April of 2022.

Saturday, November 16, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The next San Francisco debut will be by Russian virtuoso Artyom Dervoed, who has been described as the “Paganini of the guitar.”

Saturday, December 7, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The next return solo recital will be by Polish virtuoso guitarist Mateusz Kowalski, who made his San Francisco debut in October of 2023.

Saturday, January 25, Herbst Theatre: The second program to be shared with SFP will be a solo recital by Miloš Karadaglić, who usually performs under only his first name.

Saturday, February 1, Bowes Center: Ukrainian classical guitarist Marko Topchii made two videos for Omni during the pandemic, both recorded at St. Mark’s and the more recent released at the end of October of 2022. Unless I am mistaken, next year will see his “physical” debut. This performance will be shared with SFCM.

Saturday, February 8, Hume Concert Hall: Xuefei Yang will return, following up on her third solo recital in March of 2023 and the release of her Guitar Favorites album about a month earlier.

Saturday, February 22, Herbst Theatre: Sharon Isbin will give a duo recital. Readers may recall her Strings for Peace album of duos for guitar and sarod, all of which were composed by sarod master Amjad Ali Khan. Khan will join her for this performance, which will probably feature works that Khan composed for their latest album, Live in Aspen.

The members of the Mēla Guitar Quartet (from the Web page for their Omni recital)

Saturday, March 8, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: The Mēla Guitar Quartet, whose members are Matthew Robinson, George Tarlton, Zahrah Hutton, and Michael Butten, provided an OMNI on-Location video, which was screened at the beginning of last March; but, unless I am mistaken, this will be their “physical” debut in San Francisco.

Saturday, March 29, St. Mark’s Lutheran Church: Lutenist Thomas Dunford will present a program of his own interpretations of music from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

Saturday, April 12, Herbst Theatre: Ana Vidović  gave her last Omni recital this past April, and she will return for her next performance in April of next year!

Saturday, May 3, Herbst Theatre: A solo performance by Cuban-American guitarist Manuel Barrueco will mark the conclusion of the season for both Omni and SFP.

No comments: